A Bronx city council member said he was treated as an outsider by the chamber because it’s “controlled by the homosexual community,” according to a new report.

“When I get to the City Council, I find that the City Council is controlled — most council members out of 51 council members — over there, everybody is controlled by the homosexual community,” Rubén Díaz Sr. said in an interview with a spanish-language TV program geared toward cab drivers, NY1 reported.

City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, who is gay, called on Diaz to apologize after the NY1 report.

“Council Member Díaz Sr.’s homophobic comments are offensive to both the Speaker and the body, and have no place in New York City,” his communications director told the station in a statement.

“He should apologize to all of his colleagues, and the entire LGBTQ community.”

Díaz Sr., a Pentecostal minister, has vocally opposed same-sex marriage and has been criticized for past homophobic statements.

Original Article

iOS apps are facing expulsion from the Apple App Store if developers do not “disclose or remove screen recording code”. The move comes after TechCrunch security editor Zack Whittaker reported that many popular iPhone apps secretly record the screens of users.

The decision by a prominent consumer DNA-testing company to share data with federal law enforcement means investigators have access to genetic information linked to hundreds of millions of people.

FamilyTreeDNA, an early pioneer of the rapidly growing market for consumer genetic testing, confirmed late Thursday that it has granted the Federal Bureau of Investigation access to its vast trove of nearly 2 million genetic profiles. The arrangement was first reported by BuzzFeed News.

Concerns about unfettered access to genetic information gathered by testing companies have swelled since April, when police used a genealogy website to ensnare a suspect in the decades-old case of the Golden State Killer. But that site, GEDmatch, was open-source, meaning police were able to upload crime-scene DNA data to the site without permission. The latest arrangement marks the first time a commercial testing company has voluntarily given law enforcement access to user data.

Original Article

It might be a sign of the end-times, or simply a function of our currently scrambled politics, but earlier this week, four feminist activists — three from a self-described radical feminist organization Women’s Liberation Front — appeared on a panel at the Heritage Foundation. Together they argued that sex was fundamentally biological, and not socially constructed, and that there is a difference between women and trans women that needs to be respected. For this, they were given a rousing round of applause by the Trump supporters, religious-right members, natural law theorists, and conservative intellectuals who comprised much of the crowd. If you think I’ve just discovered an extremely potent strain of weed and am hallucinating, check out the video of the event.

original article

For the past year, Florida real estate agents have been actively courting wealthy Northeasterners who took a hit from the Trump administration’s tax overhaul. Now signs are emerging that some of those disgruntled taxpayers are indeed jumping at the chance to cut their tax bill by moving to Florida.

Luxury sales are slowing across the country, from New York to California, but they’re rising in South Florida. Million-dollar home sales in the fourth quarter jumped 7.5 percent from a year earlier in Miami-Dade County, 17 percent in Broward County and 15 percent in Palm Beach County. In Fort Lauderdale, the median price for a luxury condo jumped 26 percent to almost $1.6 million, according to data on the top 10 percent of sales released today by appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate.

Donald Trump’s tax overhaul got Bloomington, Illinois, executive Jim Morris looking at South Florida for a $10 million-plus mansion with his own piece of beach, low property levies and no state income tax.

“It’s not just the weather,” he said. “The advantages of the tax code are greatly appreciated.”

While the tax advantages of relocating to Florida vary depending on income and where the people are moving from, residents of high-tax states who are able to relocate are checking it out, say local brokers. Morris, 58, said he may even bring his packaging company’s headquarters with him. Hedge fund managers, retirees and other wealthy folks from high-tax states are also looking at Florida.

Foreign Buyers

Real estate brokers in the state are targeting buyers from the Northeast and other parts of the country with higher property and state taxes as Latin American buyers have pulled back amid political and economic unrest at home and a plunge in their currencies against the dollar. Last year’s federal tax bill, among other changes, limits deductions for state and local tax. The savings would mainly accrue to those making more than $1 million per year.

“New Yorkers are the new foreign buyers in Florida,” said Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel. “For people who were looking for a reason to make domicile in Florida, the new tax laws made that decision easier.”

The data suggest Broward and Palm Beach counties — typical destinations for
Northeasterners — are outperforming majority Spanish-speaking Miami-Dade. But David Martin, developer Terra’s founder and chief executive, said to beware of distortions from a handful of high-end condominium development closings.

New Projects

“New projects in Broward are going to skew your statistics more than they will
in Miami,” he said. “All three counties are going to be benefiting from this tax migration.”

Jorge Perez, the billionaire Related Group chief executive, said he sold 83 of the high-end condos at his Auberge Beach Residences & Spa in Fort Lauderdale last year. He added that foreign buyers are still coming to Florida and Broward County might finally be shedding its reputation as purely appealing to Americans.

“That spurt from international buyers has helped Fort Lauderdale a lot, because before it was purely a local and national market,” he said.

Michelle Noga, an agent at William Raveis South Florida who is working with Morris from Bloomington, said customers have been paying close attention to Florida residency requirements.

“I just finished a showing with some people from Boston,” she said of the retirees. “They want to live there for six months and one day.”

The tax changes have been good for the Palm Beach Hedge Fund Association, which has seen its membership swell to 1,700, increasing 10 to 15 percent over the past year, according to founder Dave Goodboy.

Hedge Funds

“I get phone calls on a weekly basis with people wanting to relocate here, both firms and individuals,” Goodboy said. “About 80 percent of our members are in the area. The rest are interested in coming here.”

Morris and his wife, Lori, began searching in Palm Beach about nine months ago. While most of his more than 400 employees work in manufacturing plants, he has been talking to the 20 employees in the company headquarters about a possible move, he said.

“We’re looking for the right estate — I want my own piece of beach, basically,” Morris said. “Right now, we pay a lot of state income tax.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez mocked her critics in a Washington Post interview, telling them to “enjoy being exhausted for the next two years while we run train on the progressive agenda.”

According to Urban Dictionary — not always a reliable source, but useful in this case — “run train” is colloquially defined as “to gangbang” someone with “several friends.”

Ocasio-Cortez’s pledge to gang bang the progressive agenda comes in the transcript of an extensive interview with the Post, in which she was asked about “conservative media” setting her up as “another boogeyman on the left.”

“I also think it’s encouraging because this is my sixth day in Congress and they’re out of all their artillery,” she said, referencing the fake photo of her feet in a bathtub that was covered — controversially — by the Daily Caller. “The nude is supposed to be like the bazooka. You know, like, ‘We’re going to take her down.’ Dude, you’re all out of bullets, you’re all out of bombs, you’re all out of all this stuff.”

“What have you got left?” she asked. “I’m six days into the term, and you already used all your ammo. So enjoy being exhausted for the next two years while we run train on the progressive agenda.”

It’s unclear whether Ocasio-Cortez — the freshman congresswoman and democratic socialist from New York — is aware that “run train” is a gang bang reference.

AOC also remarked on the intense scrutiny she receives, telling the Post it’s “physically exhausting.”

“The actual transition process is exhausting, but then the attention is enormous too,” she said.

Read the full interview here.

[H/t Jeff Blehar]

Seven men have been killed in a shooting attack at a bar in Mexico’s Caribbean coast resort city of Playa del Carmen, authorities said Monday.

State and local police said the attack occurred late Sunday at the “Las Virginias” bar in a low-income section relatively far from the beachside tourist zone. Six men were found shot to death in the bar, and another died at a local hospital.

READ MORE: Ontario man claims he was attacked, robbed in Playa Del Carmen

One man was wounded but survived the attack. He told police he was drinking beer with friends when gunshots broke out. The attackers have not yet been identified.

Playa del Carmen is located on the coast facing the island of Cozumel, Mexico’s leading cruise ship destination. Once a quiet fishing and ferry town, Playa del Carmen has grown exponentially in the last two decades, with lower-income neighbourhoods springing up on the inland side of the coastal highway.

The resort is midway between Cancun, to the north, and Tulum, to the south, in the coastal state of Quintana Roo, which has seen homicides more than double in the last year, with 688 killings in the first 11 months of 2018, compared to 322 in the same period of 2017. At that rate, Quintana Roo could end 2018 with a homicide rate of about 50 per 100,000, on a par with El Salvador.

The Caribbean coast – especially Cancun and the area south known as the “Riviera Maya” – had long been largely spared the drug violence affecting other areas, but that no longer appears to be the case. Local sources report that the feared Jalisco cartel has moved into the region, disputing control with local gangs.

In September, two Mexican marines were found stabbed to death in Cancun. In a single day in August, police found eight bodies strewn on the streets of Cancun.

READ MORE: Killings continue but travel agents keep selling trips to Cancun

In January 2017, gunmen attacked the state prosecutors’ office in Cancun, killing four people. A day before that, a shooting at a music festival in Playa del Carmen left three foreigners and two Mexicans dead.

The U.S. Embassy in Mexico issued a brief travel warning for Playa del Carmen in March. A February 2018 blast on a ferry apparently caused by an explosive device injured 26 people, including several American citizens.

That has sparked fears that the Caribbean resorts could come to resemble the faded Pacific coast resort of Acapulco. The bloody violence in Acapulco that flared in 2006 eventually earned it a level-four “do not travel” warning from the U.S. Department of State.

Still, violence in Playa del Carmen is still far from Acapulco levels. In 2017, Acapulco had a homicide rate of 103 per 100,000 inhabitants, one of the highest in Mexico and the world.

WATCH: Canada issues travel advisory for Mexican tourist destination ahead of spring break

7 killed after shooting in Mexico’s resort city Playa del Carmen

It’s all your fault, men.

For the first time in its history, the American Psychological Association (APA) released guidelines concerning men and boys, saying that so-called “traditional masculinity” not only is “harmful” but also could lead to homophobia and sexual harassment.

“The main thrust of the subsequent research is that traditional masculinity – marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression – is, on the whole, harmful,” reads the news release by the famed association.

“The main thrust of the subsequent research is that traditional masculinity – marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression – is, on the whole, harmful.”
— The American Psychological Association
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It notes that research shows “traditional masculinity is psychologically harmful and that socializing boys to suppress their emotions causes damage that echoes both inwardly and outwardly.”

The 36-page document goes on to coin “masculinity ideology,” which stems from traditional masculinity, and claims that it harms boys and men.

EATING VEGAN DIET PROMOTES ‘WHITE MASCULINITY,’ SOCIOLOGIST ARGUES

“Traditional masculinity ideology has been shown to limit males’ psychological development, constrain their behavior, result in gender role strain and gender role conflict and negatively influence mental health and physical health,” the report warns.

Left’s ‘toxic masculinity’ label to blame for male crisis?Video
The “masculinity ideology” is defined by the APA as “a particular constellation of standards that have held sway over large segments of the population, including: anti-femininity, achievement, eschewal of the appearance of weakness, and adventure, risk, and violence.”

The research goes on to suggest that masculine boys may put their energy toward disruptive behaviors such as homophobia, bullying and even sexual harassment rather than strive for academic excellence.

“Though men benefit from patriarchy, they are also impinged upon by patriarchy,” said Ronald F. Levant, EdD, a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Akron and co-editor of the APA volume “The Psychology of Men and Masculinities.”

The new paper also advises clinicians how to address the problems of their own bias when treating boys and men, and urges to address how “power, privilege, and sexism work both by conferring benefits to men and by trapping them in narrow roles.”